Motorola A3000

Available now 
3rd February 2009

The Motorola A3000 looks almost exactly like the upcoming Motorola MOTOSURF A3100 - an impressive looking Windows touchscreen phone with WiFi, 3.5G data and GPS.

Strangely, the A3000 and A3100 devices are absolutely identical in hardware terms. The difference between them is that the A3000 will be sold to carriers that don't support UMTS 3G networks, and the A3100 is aimed at everyone else.

We don't mean that the A3000 is the A3100 with the 3G removed - it still has everything it needs to send UMTS / HSDPA data in hardware, so roaming to a country with 3G should work just fine, and if your carrier upgrades their network, then the A3000 should be OK with that too. 3.5G support is still listed on the specification sheet as being available, but at the point of sale this will be sold strictly as a 2.5G device.

There is a difference in the pictures of the two phones - the A3000 shows an "E" (for EDGE) for the data connection, the A3100 shows "H" (for HSDPA).

China Unicom and China Mobile are two potential customers of the A3000, both have EDGE networks but no 3G implementation. There are many other similar operators around the world, usually in places where population demographics make a 3G rollout uneconomical.

We don't know exactly when the A3000 will come to market, but the A3100 is slated for a Q1 release - this probably means that the A3000 should also be available during Q1 as it is the same handset.